Trump frightens me.  A lot. His relentless, step-by-step demolition of our democracy, his triggering of economic collapse at home and abroad, his incomparable self-dealing and corruption, his hostility to climate-change remedies, his causing, exacerbating, or ignoring death and suffering and destruction all over the world have me seeking distraction. I pray and I hope and I give money to promising causes, but that’s not enough to keep the snakes in their basket.

So, I’m  happy to report that for a while last evening, Trump angst left me alone. It felt like a fever breaking or a sudden relief from physical pain. I just lay back against the pillows and let the  graceful, carefully fact-checked language of a short, nonpolitical piece in TheNew Yorker take me to a better place. They almost always have that effect on me. Then, if Trump world doesn’t force itself on me in a nightmare, I wake in the morning feeling more able to cope. (And sometimes I think to bless the people who showed me the joy of reading, especially my mother, who drilled me on the basics and threw in enchantment as well.)

The New Yorker is not the only bedtime reading that offers respite from Trump fear.  Anything that is easy to get into, absorbing, and not overtly political will do. I usually get the same result from short pieces in The Atlantic and the Times Literary Supplement.

As if that weren’t enough to keep me from falling into that greatest of Trump’s monuments, the slough of despond, I take naps as regularly as Winston Churchill did. Rarely do faithless fears and worldly anxieties keep me awake.

Ann reads more than I do, and I suppose it has about the same anesthetic effect on her as it does on me. She employs other tactics as well. She starts every morning in bed drinking coffee and doing the word games in the New York Times, avoiding news and comment until she has filled in the blanks. For a little while, intense pursuit of Queen Bee status blocks thoughts about the national debt or the Strait of Hormuz. The Sunday crossword in the New York Times has the same effect.

And, more and more, as Trump’s terrifying actions are piling up, she finds relief in following Yankees baseball. She keeps up with batting averages and other stats, injuries, and the social lives of some of the players. When working or otherwise occupied, she records games for watching later. I join her sometimes. It sure beats thinking about Trump’s pernicious egotism.

To be sure, reading and puzzling and baseball are not the only ways to take effective12 time outs. Sometimes I just stare at the wall for a while. Sometimes I sit on a bench in the park and look at the flowers and the river. Or think about the long runs I used to take fifty years ago in a mountain valley in Washington. Or young-voice singing. Or old-voice listening. Or being naked on a beach. Or something similar.

Afterward, I’m able to take a deep breath and consider what I can do to help save the world from the maniac in the White House.

12.000 Miles of Road Thoughts and other books by Paul Willcott are available wherever you buy books in print or online..